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Koeberg nuclear power station is located 30 km north of Cape Town, owned and operated by the country's only national electricity supplier, Eskom. Jordi Matas/Demotix. All rights reserved.

When the
famously oil-rich Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced last month
that it would be ridding its nearly $1 billion portfolio of fossil fuel
investments, it was not only a coup for the student-led divestment movement
that began a couple years earlier in the United States, but also further
recognition of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, whose successful use
of the tactic served as inspiration.

In a recent article for The Guardian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, “Just as we argued in the 1980s
that those who conducted business with apartheid South Africa were aiding and
abetting an immoral system, we can say that nobody should profit from the
rising temperatures, seas and human suffering caused by the burning of fossil
fuels.”

Being a
historical touchstone is nothing new for South Africans. When it comes to
divestment — be it the US campaigns against tobacco and sweatshop labor in the
1990s or the current global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — the anti-apartheid struggle is always cited
as an influence. What is still largely new for South Africans, however, is
actually being the ones to launch a divestment campaign. Despite being closely
associated with the tactic, it was actually the work of international
activists. As a result, there seems to be a sense among South Africans that
such efforts are best left to wealthier countries — not to mention some
skepticism about the actual importance of divestment to toppling apartheid.

“Divestment
is a peculiarly ‘feel-good’ American concept,” said Terry Crawford-Browne, a
former international banker, who became an activist in the 1980s, advising Tutu,
among others, on the banking sanctions campaign against apartheid. He argues
that this action made business in South Africa untenable and played a bigger
role in ending apartheid than the divestment of American companies from their
South African subsidiaries. Now he is advising the same strategy for the BDS
movement against Israel, which has actually had a South Africa
campaign since 2010.

As for
divestment from fossil fuels, Crawford-Browne said, “I’m afraid that climate
change remains too much of a middle class concern for most South Africans.”
Dominique Doyle of the Johannesburg-based environmental justice organization
Earthlife Africa, shared a similar sentiment, saying, “[Divestment] is indeed a
very strong strategy for the climate movement, but perhaps has more strength
right now in the northern hemisphere, where the capital for fossil fuel
investment is generally held and maintained.”

Nevertheless,
both acknowledge that South Africa needs to address its carbon emissions, which
rank among the worst in the world due in large part to coal production. To make
matters worse, the current government also supports widespread fracking,
increases in coal exports and deep-sea drilling.

“We should
lead the world in renewable energy – wind, solar, waves – but the vested
interests at Eskom [South Africa’s leading power utility] and elsewhere are
still pumping coal and now nuclear energy,” Crawford-Browne said. The latter
has been a leading issue for Earthlife, which regularly holds demonstrations outside Eskom’s headquarters
attended by the many poor people who are affected by the utility’s outrageous
prices and pollution.

Yet, despite
all signs suggesting South Africans are not interested in a divestment campaign
against fossil fuels, students, faculty, staff and alumni at the University of
Cape Town, or UCT, launched one last year. Although they have yet to persuade the university, or any other
institution, the campaign is still in the design and research phase, with
ambitions of spreading beyond South Africa, to include regional targets.

“Even 25 years later, South Africans remain divided on the subject
of the anti-apartheid divestment campaign and the extent of its contribution to
ending apartheid,” said David Le Page, a founding member of Fossil Free UCT. He
is among those who believe divestment was a crucial tactic — if only for the global
solidarity and widespread moral opposition it created. As such, he thinks it's
a great model for climate activists to follow. “This is, once again, a struggle
about the fundamental human rights of Africans, who stand to suffer as
much, if not more than, the people of any other continent should climate change
go unchecked – while also being less responsible than any other part of the
world.”

350.org’s Africa and Middle East Team Leader Ferrial Adam, who is
helping Fossil Free UCT develop its campaign, said that the organizing is
influenced by more than the anti-apartheid struggle. “It’s becoming a
combination of that style of campaigning with some new tactics being introduced.
For instance, the way Greenpeace campaigns — hanging banners, chaining
themselves to gates, etc. — is fairly new and different in South Africa.”

Le Page also pointed to the struggle for HIV treatment in South
Africa led by the Treatment Action Campaign in the early 2000’s as a direct
inspiration, citing its “multi-level approach, which combined building a social
movement, civil disobedience, media work, deep activist education, legal
strategies and international mobilization.”

Meanwhile,
Durban-based political economist and UTC Fossil Free supporter Patrick Bond
argues that organizers should also find inspiration in lessons learned. He
described the transition of the apartheid regime to a government that adopted
economically devastating neoliberal policies as a “good warning of going back
too fast to the bankers you forced out.”

Best-selling
author and journalist Naomi Klein, whose 2007 book “The Shock Doctrine”
documents this transition and its fallout, is also a major supporter of the
fossil fuel divestment movement. She recently spoke highly of its ability to
create a more just economy, saying, “This is the beginning of the kind of model
that we need, and the first step is saying these profits are not acceptable and
once we collectively say that and believe that and express that in our
universities, in our faith institutions, at city council level, then we’re one
step away from where we need to be, which is polluter pays.”

Tutu also agrees that a transformative victory is within reach,
calling last month’s announcement by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund "a
tipping point of transition to a new energy economy that was just and
equitable.”

If he and Klein are right about the potential of fossil fuel
divestment, then no matter how South Africans engage with it, they will have
played a crucial role.